


Deaths Door

by ParadoxMage



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Amélie/Lena, F/F, Kinda Dark, Some Fluff, Therapy, mentioned torture, plot divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-07 01:41:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 6,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8778097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadoxMage/pseuds/ParadoxMage
Summary: They had given up on life. They were dying, seeking death out. In their final moments, before darkness claimed them, they reached out. They found someone who shared their pain, and gave them a reason to keep living.





	1. Recovery

**Author's Note:**

> This story sprang from an idea I had weeks ago, and it proceeded to be the stubbornest piece of writing I've done for a long time. Every time I started it I ended up scrapping it, until eventually it evolved into this. It's one of the longer stories I've written about Overwatch, and I'm not sure how good it is, which I guess is what you guys are for.
> 
> I must confess that if you're looking for some well written, detailed, Widow/Tracer fluff, you should look elsewhere. This story only touches on it a little, and there are definitely better stories out there, I've even read some of them.

“Do you want to talk about it?” 

 

It had been two months since Lena Oxton had been officially declared un-deceased, brought back to life by the skill of one of her best friends, a certain gorilla by the name of Winston.

 

Lena shook her head, lips pressed together tightly, eyes shiny with unshed tears. Angela didn’t understand, would never understand, but she tried anyway. These therapy sessions were her idea. She was one of the few people who saw through the facade of carefree happiness she had thrown up upon her return, along with a few other close friends. She saw the pain and fear in the younger woman’s eyes, the hint of madness buried inches under the surface. 

 

And, being Angela, that would not do.

 

The first several weeks passed with Angela asking questions that received no answer other than quiet mutters of ascent or denial. “How are you, are you okay, do you need anything?”All and more were posed and answered to the barest hint of decency, most of the responses lies that Lena didn’t really expect her to believe. 

 

But somehow she felt that admitting to the shattered nature of her psyche would cross a line and leave her more broken than she was now. So she lied, and Angela accepted the lies, knowing full well of their nature. 

 

She knew that something had happened, something the normally hyperactive brit was hiding from everyone, something she couldn’t talk about now, with the experience still close enough to touch. So she waited, for the young woman to share later what couldn’t be shared now.

 

Exactly three months into their sessions Lena managed to talk about where she was in the intermediary between her disappearance from the Slipstream craft and reappearance at Watchpoint Gibraltar. Curled into a ball in her chair, head against her knees, she told a story of a black void where time had no meaning, where she had almost disappeared forever. She tried to laugh it off, but the laughter was hollow and fake, and they both knew what neither said. The experience had broken something deep inside of her. 

 

She might never be the same again.


	2. Reintegration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena's doing better, even though she's not cured, and that can mean only one thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really short chapter again, but they get longer, don't worry.

Two months later Angela approved Lena for combat. Normally she wouldn’t have taken such a risk, especially with such a dear friend, but Lena needed it, and Overwatch needed her. With the development of her new abilities “Tracer”, as she had been nicknamed, was itching to get out there and fight for a better world. It didn’t hurt that Talon was getting bolder by the day. Along with their continued expansion and an increased number of attacks on both humans and omnics, there had been whispers of a new operative. A sniper who never missed a shot, leaving a crowded battlefield a massacre within moments. Really, it was all stacked in Lena’s favor, so Angela begrudgingly signed the release form proffered by the eager Brit. 

 

To be fair, she was doing better. She spoke more in their therapy sessions and a smile was never far from her face when she was around others. But she wasn’t cured, and she might never truly be healed of the terrible experience. When no one was watching the smile dropped from her face, replaced by a look full of pain and sadness. The carefree persona she put on was just a front, and they both knew it, but there was nothing that Angela could do. So she did all she could, and kept hoping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I posted these first two chapters yesterday and it already has 226 hits and counting! I never expected that, and I just want to say thank you guys so much and I hope you're enjoying it so far.


	3. Encounter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena reenters combat for the first time since the incident, and is plagued by the sense that she has forgotten something. 
> 
> Or someone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's a lot longer than the previous two. Like a lot. So enjoy.

“Boy, it’s good to be back!” shouted Lena, an ear splitting grin fixed on her face as she ran into the fray. She blinked past a closely packed squadron of Talon soldiers and dispatched them all with a rapid series of shots from her pulse pistols. With her new abilities it wasn’t even a challenge. She skipped back a few seconds along her time stream to alert the rest of her team that the path was clear before speeding off again, intent on ending the fight as quickly as possible.

 

It may have been her first time back in combat in months, but she instantly began to settle back into a familiar rhythm, the cadence now augmented by the additional beats of her blinks, creating a frenzied tempo that soothed her heart and cleared her mind of fear. 

 

Somewhere, tucked away in a dark corner of her thoughts, she was still screaming. But fighting helped make her forget. So she fought hard, and let the haze of battle obscure the terrors that lurked in her mind. 

 

Everything was going well. Too well. Overwatch had captured a large ammo stockpile Talon had been moving and were slowly escorting it back to their choppers. It looked like they could safely chalk this mission up in the win column. 

 

Then, disaster struck.

 

In rapid succession every Overwatch agent surrounding the payload fell, dead before they could blink, a sound like thunder in the cloudless sky the only indication of their deaths. 

 

“Sniper!” 

 

The cry spread like wildfire, as the remaining members of the strike team scattered and began to scan the area for the mysterious operative they had heard so many rumors about over the course of the last few months. The remaining ranking officers began shouting orders, trying to get the troops under their command back into some semblance of order as more people dropped lifeless to the ground. 

 

Lena left them to it. She already had a good idea where the sniper was, judging by the line of sight he would have needed along with where the roar of the rifle had originated. She grinned. Maybe she’d have a good story to tell back at the barracks. She blinked along quickly, trying to give the mysterious Talon agent as little time to move as possible. 

 

She wasn’t fast enough. 

 

By the time she had located the sniper four more of her teammates had been dropped by the perfectly aimed rifle. Lena growled. It was her fault. She should have been faster, found the agent and eliminated him before he had time to take out any more of her friends. It wasn’t about pride or stories anymore. It was about justice. And vengeance.

 

Lena ran around a chimney, and there she was. Yes, she. The sniper was a woman. She was wearing a purple catsuit and her hair was long and pulled up into a long purplish-blue wave that fell down past her waist. Strangest of all, it seemed that her skin was painted blue for some reason. On her head sat a strange black visor with seven large, glowing red dots covering it. 

 

She stopped short. 

Something about this woman seemed… 

Familiar. 

 

Then her eyes strayed down and all thoughts of familiarity were forgotten, because in her hands lay the weapon that had so efficiently annihilated her fellow Overwatch agents. 

 

Lena took great satisfaction in knowing that she wouldn’t be able to use that rifle ever again very soon.

 

With a shout she blinked out from behind a nearby chimney and emptied a clip from both her pistols directly at the mysterious snipers head. She wasn’t sure how but the woman somehow managed to roll out of the way of her shots, ending on her knees, rifle at the ready. 

 

She reacted instinctively, blinking to the right, just in time to avoid the single bullet that passed through the empty air where she had been only moments before. The fact that she had almost died registered slowly, but it only renewed her determination to kill this woman. 

 

The woman in question cocked her head to the side, examining Lena with the red dots, which she realized were there to provide multiple points of view during combat. At least that explained how she had managed to avoid her initial barrage of bullets when her back was turned.

 

“Hmm…” she said in a smooth but carrying voice, a thin smirk adorning her lips. “You might actually be worthy of my time chérie.”

 

Lena fell back a half step. 

That voice. 

Where had she heard that voice? 

 

A second later she had no time to ponder the identity of the sniper because she was too busy trying not to be the newest notch on her already heavily scarred rifle. She returned fire, blinking in and out of view to keep out of the way of those deadly rounds, aimed with such precision.

 

They fought for a small eternity. Fire was traded, bullets missing their mark by millimeters. This wasn’t like any battle Lena had ever been in. It was a dance, guided by the certainty that one of them would not be alive at the end of the song. 

 

The survivor of their contest would have to be determined another day however, as an armored blue form blasted into the air above them, forcing the enemy snipers retreat with a handful of well aimed rockets.

 

The woman paused for a moment at the edge of the roof and said something that was rendered inaudible by the explosive sound waves from Pharah’s missiles, before turning and jumping off the roof, grappling away. Lena stood there, as she finally gave herself a moment to think about the strange sense of deja vu the Talon agent had evoked in her, before her thoughts moved on to what the mysterious enemy had said. 

 

Few knew it, but Lena Oxton had developed a wide range of skills during her time with Overwatch, including the ability to read lips. So it was unsurprising that she knew exactly what the sniper had said.

 

As she fended off Pharah’s questions, confirming that she was in fact unharmed, her mind processed the movements of the snipers lips into recognizable english. The words, and the deadly woman who had spoken them, not leaving her thoughts for days afterwards.

 

“Until next time chérie”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said every day or two, but I was editing this story for grammar and I suddenly had an amazing idea for a new chapter. That idea became reworking one old chapter into three new ones, which I wrote quickly originally, but I've been fine tuning them a bit recently. This chapter is one of the three, and the others will be coming soon, so be prepared.


	4. Intermission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We all know Lena never backs down from a challenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another short one, I'm sorry (not really), but I thought that this was important, so it stays. At least I didn't make you wait days for this piddly excuse for a chapter.

Lena kept her ear to the ground for any news of the Talon sniper. Unfortunately for her, the woman may as well have been a ghost for all the trail she left. For days afterwards the mysterious figure was all she could think about, her parting words haunting her thoughts like an unfulfilled promise.

 

After weeks of searching, she heard about an unknown sniper taking out many of the high ranking politicians in Numbani, a sniper who had uncanny aim and an ability to get into even the most secure locations.  She immediately requested that she be assigned to the mission. Overwatch’s higher ups didn’t even ask why she wanted the assignment, just telling her to get rid of the enemy operative as quickly as she could.

 

As they flew out to Numbani Lena’s head was abuzz with questions, with one standing head and shoulders above the rest.

 

Where did she know this Talon agent from?

 

Now that there weren’t bullets whizzing around her ears she could take a moment to think about how truly familiar she was. Her accent, her appearance, it all set off alarm bells somewhere deep inside of her, in a place where she had buried memories of a time without time. She shook her head, trying to clear it.

 

Thinking about _that_ before a mission would only make her distracted, and soon after dead.

 

Besides, it was impossible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another one of the more recent segments I wrote that came out of the rework I did. I was a bit iffy on posting it, but here it is. Expect more within the next day or two, unless inspiration strikes and I rewrite something. Sorry if that does happen, but whatever you eventually get will be a lot better for it.


	5. Reccurrence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dance begins again, with an unexpected ending.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long, life's been hectic. This ones not super short like the last one, so enjoy :)

“Sniper!”

 

“We’re pinned down, can anyone take out this bastard?”

 

“Tracer here, I’m on it.”

 

As the roar of the rifle sounded once again in the clear sky, another agent, another friend, fell to the ground before the blood could even begin to flow. Every crack of thunder signified another dead teammate, and every burst of sound only made her rage deepen.

 

She focused on the task at hand, and sped down winding streets towards the nest she had located after the first couple of shots. When she arrived she was greeted by the sight of the sniper standing waiting for her, visor still closed, rifle held easily in her hands, as though the lives it had taken weighed nothing. She smirked at the Overwatch agent, and loaded a fresh clip into her gun.

 

“Shall we dance.”

 

That voice.

 

Oh so familiar, like a whisper from a dream, dissipating like mist.

 

She _knew_ that voice, or she should’ve, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out where the sense of knowing came from. It didn’t matter in a moment though, as the song started to play and the dance began again.

 

Lena fought differently. They knew each other better now, knew their moves. There was nothing quite as intimate as combat, and both had gotten more than a glimpse at the others fighting style. So instead of trying old moves, she began to make things up as she went, improvising to the beat of the song only they could hear. For all they knew, the world was burning.

 

Right now, nothing existed but the dance.

 

As they whirled around each other, trading fire, Lena realized that their dance made her forget. For the duration of the dance she didn't think about the dark. A shot that came too close for comfort reminded her why, as all her concentration became refocused on the fight. But in some private corner of her mind, she realized that it was another reason why she had been so anxious to find this woman again.

 

She made forgetting easy.

 

The dance continued, neither gaining the upper hand, neither really caring, spinning and dodging and surviving by the skin of their teeth. But as she heard her fellow agents reporting that the evac was here, she knew it was time to end things. Only this time, the song would end like it should’ve ended the first time. With one of them dead.

 

Suddenly, Lena broke away from their duel, running across the rooftops away from the other woman. She took a quick moment to look behind her, and saw the sniper lining up the shot, lips moving to form words that were lost over the growing distance.

 

“Adieu chérie.”

 

But as that final, deadly bullet flew towards her, she drew on the powers of her chronal accelerator and turned her timeline back to a point where she had been standing behind the sniper. As the Talon agent began to turn, rifle still held ready, Lena dove towards her and knocked the rifle from her grip, pinning her to the roof.

 

Lena rolled the now defenseless sniper over onto her back, and put the barrel of her gun up to the woman’s head. She writhed and twisted, trying to break free to no avail.

“This is for all my mates that you did in today, and all the other people you’ve killed,” said Lena. “They were good people, every single damn one, and if you’re alive you’re just going to keep adding notches to that gun over there, aren’t you...”

 

Her angry tirade slowly trailed off as the enemy operative pinned beneath her reacted in a way she had never expected.

 

The sniper froze, all signs of struggle leaving her.

 

“Your voice…” she said, and once again Lena was hit by that pang of familiarity as the heavily accented words left her mouth.

 

Slowly, the woman beneath her reached up and pressed a small button on the side of her visor, causing it to retract from her face.

 

Lena’s eyes met a pair of golden orbs she thought she had dreamed in her own delirium. She ripped her own goggles off her head and stared in shock as she realized that the blue color wasn’t paint, it was her _skin_. Suddenly, that strange familiarity made perfect sense.

 

“You!” she cried. “What, how?”

“You aren’t real,” muttered the woman under her. “You can’t be.”

 

They looked at each other, shock still apparent in their eyes.

 

“You are a dream, an illusion. You cannot be here...” said the woman she thought she had imagined, as though saying it again would make it true.

“I was thinking the same thing.” said Lena.

 

She stayed where she was above the french woman, staring into the eyes of the person that had saved her.

 

Slowly, the sniper lifted up a hand, and ever so gently touched her cheek, as though afraid she might disappear. Lena flinched slightly at the cold touch of the woman’s skin, and the sense of deja vu that accompanied it.

 

“I remember…” she said quietly. “I remember a time before the Widowmaker. I was…Amélie…” She looked down at her hands in horror.

“Mon Dieu. What have I done!”

 

Without warning she froze, as images of who she had been began to fill her mind and fight back against the programming Talon had instilled in her, the mind they had planted in this body. But even as her old mind began to try and reassert itself, it saw what her new mind had done, the lives she had taken, and for the first time the true horror of what she was hit her. She screamed, the memories of lives taken before their time by her hands too much to cope with, now that her emotions came to the fore for the first time in months. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she lapsed into unconsciousness.

  
“Nononononononononononono,” cried Lena. “I just found you, your real, you saved me. I’m not losing you now that we’ve just met.” She picked up the tall woman, barely noticing her weight in her hurry to try and get the catatonic female the help she needed. She blinked back to street level, seeking whatever remnants of her team remained. She knew there was only one person that could even try to understand what was happening to the blue woman in her arms.

 

She needed Angela.


	6. Fragmented

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Lena finds Angela it's... not what she was expecting.
> 
> We get a look at events that Lena tries very hard not to remember.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back. I've been kinda sick for the past couple days, and it sucks and I'm sorry.
> 
> This chapter is formatted very differently than my previous ones, since it flips between current events and past events. It should be pretty clear when that happens. Interestingly enough, one of my first drafts used this idea in a very different way, and I reused pieces of it as the flashback-y bits since I thought that they were pretty interesting. Ok, enough backstory BS, get reading!

When she had first opened her eyes to nothing she had been shocked, understandably. The fire of her exploding cockpit had been replaced by a featureless blankness that scared the dickens out of her. Once the shock wore off however she felt rather happy. After all, she was alive, away from a fiery explosion that would have surely killed her and there wasn’t anything immediately deadly here. 

 

Those feelings faded, happiness replaced by fear, slowly turning to dread. In the first immeasurable count of time she had been there she had discovered that she didn’t need to eat, drink or even breath. After a while, when time continued to cease to exist and nothing changed, she came to a horrible realization.

 

She couldn’t die.

 

◇ ◇ ◇

 

Angela’s reaction had not been what she had expected in the slightest. Instead of worry about a new patient, or fear that Lena was bringing a known Talon operative back to their base, or anger on the same grounds, she saw something even stranger. The look on the blond doctor’s face was one of shock, amazement… and carefully guarded hope. 

 

“Amélie…” She looked up at Lena. “How is this possible?” 

Lena kept running, trying to get to the medbay as quickly as possible. “No time, something’s wrong.”

Angela stirred herself from memories of a time in the past when she had a sister but for blood, and realized that if this was real, if this truly was  _ her _ , then she couldn’t just stand around here and do nothing. It was time to do what she did best.

 

She charged after Lena into the medbay. 

 

“Did someone call a doctor?”

 

◇ ◇ ◇

 

She noticed the fading later. Her hand went from opaque to translucent to hazy around the edges. She wasn’t sure if she was more scared of fading away or simply existing forever. After even more time she began to hope the fade would take her soon. 

 

Anything was better than her eternal endurance.

 

◇ ◇ ◇

 

After several grueling hours and an impossibly large number of tests, Angela finally declared that the woman she had once known as Amélie, and who had been known as the Talon operative Widowmaker by Overwatch for the past few months, was in shock.

 

“Shock!” exclaimed Lena. “You spend hours testing her and poking her full of needles and that’s all you can say?! She’s in SHOCK?!”

 

Angela stumbled away from the hospital bed upon which Amélie lay, reaching for a chair to collapse into. She held her head in her hands for a moment, before slowly raising her tired eyes to meet Lena’s, seeing the worry filling the smaller girl. It gave her pause for a moment, seeing Lena so torn up about someone she should never have had a chance to meet in the first place.

 

“Ja,” replied the blond doctor. “I don’t know what exactly they did to her, but I am fairly sure they put her through some kind of neural reconditioning. Somehow, for reasons I can’t begin to comprehend, she broke free of Talon’s programming on the roof with you. The clash between her old self and the person Talon molded her into must have been…” She struggled to find the right word. “Disturbing.”

 

“But how do we make her better?” 

 

Angela looked back up at the constantly smiling brit, but this time her trademark grin was absent. She had, Angela thought, the same look she sometimes wore during their sessions. Lost somewhere dark and cold, alone and afraid. She briefly wondered if the unconscious woman between them had something to do with Lena’s time in the void. But that was impossible.

 

Angela sighed, dropping her head back into her hands once again.

 

“We pray.”

 

◇ ◇ ◇

 

She gave up. Her friends would have been shocked. Lena Oxton, the girl with a smile practically glued on her face, the girl who laughed at the impossible and didn’t quit unless she was physically restrained, giving up. 

 

She almost cracked a smile at that. 

  
It turned out that going against an impossibility might not be enough to break her, but she would crack in the face of eternity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As of when I'm posting this, Deaths Door has gotten 744 hits and 48 kudos, more than I've ever gotten or ever expected to get. I just want to thank you guys again, and I hope you enjoy.


	7. Resurrection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amélie Lacroix or Widowmaker or whoever she is currently lays comatose in Overwatch's medbay. Next to her, as constant as a shadow, is a certain British Overwatch agent who has far more questions than answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long to post, life has been hell. This one also flips time frames, just a heads up.

She didn’t care. She wished for the fade to claim her quickly, to end her eternal vigil in this place where time didn’t exist. She was ready to die.

 

And then, the impossible happened. She saw someone.

 

◇ ◇ ◇

 

Over the days that followed Lena never left the comatose snipers bedside. She talked to the unresponsive woman constantly during her forced vigil, telling her about her life in Overwatch, her new abilities, her friends, anything. She liked to think Amélie could hear her.

 

Occasionally, when no one was watching, she quietly begged for her to wake up. If anyone had been there to listen they would have heard her saying the same thing over and over again. 

 

“You saved me, I’m not letting you go.”

 

The freezing cold hand in Lena’s grasp slowly tightened around her own, as she muttered that phrase again and again like a prayer. She stopped mid word, and looked at the blued hand resting in her own flesh toned one. Slowly, she moved her eyes up the other woman’s arm to her face, her eyes finding those golden orbs, finally open after so many days.

 

“You are wrong chérie,” she said. “You saved me.” 

 

As soon as those words left her mouth she closed her eyes again and lapsed back into unconsciousness. Lena sat there for a moment, struck dumb, then she was off like a shot, yelling for Angela.

 

◇ ◇ ◇

 

It had been so long that she almost didn’t recognize the shape as human. But there it was. Off in the distance someone lay curled up in a ball, holding their head in their hands. Even from across whatever distance separated them Lena could here a feverish muttering coming from the figure. Snatches of words “No more, Stop, Please” floated through the empty air towards her. She followed the sound, going over to the shape. She, for the shape was definitely female, had icy blue skin and purplish-blue hair down to her waist. Her face was contorted in pain and fear and she clutched the sides of her head as though trying to stop her skull from being rent in two. 

 

Suddenly she sat up, gasping for air, and Lena realised that the woman’s eyes were a strange golden color, adding one more oddity to the already mysterious person. The stranger looked back and forth wildly, and eventually fixed Lena with a piercing gaze,  a wild look in her metallic eyes. 

 

“Are you real?” asked the woman.

“Are you?” asked Lena.

 

◇ ◇ ◇

 

In the coming days it felt like an endless parade of people wanted to see Dr. Zeigler’s latest marvel, the blue woman who had woken up from a coma so deep no one had expected a recovery, let alone one this sudden and without precedent. Amélie bore the visits with a shocking amount of dignity, considering most of the doctors wanted to do little more than lock her up or stick her full of needles. 

Or both. 

Many of them feared that her rehabilitation was a front, a way for Widowmaker to infiltrate Overwatch. No one said that though, out of fear that a certain British Overwatch agent would pay them a visit.

 

During this time Lena became Amélie’s guard, keeping her safe and mentally sound with her mere presence. But whenever no one was looking, which wasn’t often, they shared looks that seemed to hold an entire mental discussion between the two.

 

“What, how, why?”

“Hush. Not here chérie. We will talk about this later. Away from prying eyes.”

“Alright, but as soon as there’s breathing room you and I have a lot to discuss.”

“Agreed.”

 

No one but Angela noticed these exchanges, and she only noticed because she knew Lena so completely, and had once known Amélie just as well. She wanted to ask many questions, but she knew that she would have to let them work through things on their own first.

 

After enough inspections and tests to make them both want to scream Widowmaker, now Amélie once again, was considered safe. Everyone agreed, somehow she had thrown off Talon’s programming and taken control of her mind once again. 

  
Of course, there were still skeptics, people who thought it was a trick and they would all wake up riddled with sniper slugs, but they kept quiet enough to allow the former Talon sniper a little space. Which of course meant that there was a lot of catching up to be done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If things keep going like this I'll crack 1,000 hits on this story within the next two days or so. Help me make that impossible dream a reality, and once again, thanks for reading.


	8. Memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amélie isn't as cured as most people think.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again! Here's another shorty. Enjoy!

“How do you feel?”

 

Amélie stopped short. In the last couple of weeks she had been asked many questions, but this was the first one that seemed to be posed with actual emotion, by someone who actually cared about her.

 

The idea gave her pause, the thought of someone wanting to know if she was alright due to completely unselfish compassion, instead of the fear that she would place a bullet between their eyes. And it was because of that feeling she told Lena something she hadn’t told anyone. The truth.

 

“I feel…” She stopped, looking for the right word. “Broken.” She tapped the side of her head. “Whatever they did to me, it’s still there. I feel it, like a splinter in my brain.” She chuckled darkly. Once, she had been that shard of thought, pushed to the back while other, more evil thoughts took priority.

 

“Will you be okay?” Lena looked at her, worry apparent in her eyes.

 

Amélie sighed, and looked down at her hands. 

 

Suddenly, she was on a rooftop, looking down the scope of her rifle, the crosshairs lined up on a man sitting on a couch next to a wife and two young children. Without hesitation she pulled the trigger, the thunder of the shot splitting the night, soon replaced by the screams of the woman and children who had witnessed the death of their father and husband.

 

She shuddered, and she was in Lena’s room again, faded posters decorating the walls, dirty clothes thrown haphazardly around the living area. Across from her on the bed sat the person who had saved her, allowing her to live again now. The only person who truly knew the pain she had gone through.

 

Lena was looking worried again. Apparently she had reacted more strongly to the shard of memory than she had realized. She averted her eyes. If she kept looking at Lena she might give away just how shattered she was inside, like a mirror hit by a wrecking ball. She also realized that the other girl already knew, but she tried to hide it anyway, just as Lena had hid the truth of her experience in the void from Angela. Amélie realized that she still hadn’t answered her question. She considered lying, but knowing it was futile, went with honesty instead.

 

“I do not know.”

 

◇ ◇ ◇

 

They looked at each other and Lena came to the conclusion that she must have gone mad. How else could she be seeing a blue skinned, purple haired, golden eyed french woman in a place where nothing had any right to exist.

 

“I’ve gone mad.” she whispered to herself. “How else could this be possible?”

“I was just thinking the same thing.” said the woman.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're closing in on the last couple chapters, so heads up. I hope you like what you've been reading so far, and I hope you'll stick around as the curtain starts to drop.


	9. Catharsis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angela and Lena introduce a new member to their therapy meetings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kinda short, but I like my chapters that way, what can you do.

Within the next week an addition was made to Angela and Lena’s sessions. Amélie remained quiet the whole time, sitting next to the smaller girl, hand occasionally straying to hers.

 

Whether it was to comfort Lena or herself, Angela wasn’t sure. 

 

Whatever the case, Lena opened up enough for the both of them, speaking about issues she had skirted and avoided in prior sessions. Multiple times she seemed to be on the verge of pulling herself inwards, shutting out the world as she had done so many times before in sessions past. But every time that happened Amélie was there, taking her hand, giving her a small smile and a reassuring squeeze. And each time, Lena smiled back sadly, and continued to talk.

 

When the session was over, Angela stopped Amélie at the door.

 

“Do you remember me?” she asked.

 

Amélie stared at her, a whirlwind of images going through her mind, but each was degraded and blackened, as though her memories had been through a fire. All she got were bits and pieces. 

 

She frowned.

“Just… fragments.” she said slowly. “But… I remember caring for you very much.”

 

Angela smiled sadly, not really expecting to be greeted as an old friend. She hugged the taller woman.

“We both cared for each other very much. You were my best friend.” Angela pulled away. Amélie remained standing there for a moment, then turned to leave.

 

“It’s good to see you again Angie.”

 

Angela froze at the use of a long retired nickname, and began to hope that maybe her best friend wasn’t as dead and buried as she had believed.

 

◇ ◇ ◇

 

Lena reached out to touch her, wondering if she had managed to falsify the sensation of touch as well as sight and sound. They both jerked violently away from the contact, but not from the sensation of the others skin. When Lena’s hand had met the woman’s shoulder a flicker of memory had passed between them. Lena’s breath froze in her throat and her blood turned to ice as she heard droning voices, saw pulsing lights, felt needles and injections and her heart rate slowing to a crawl. She screamed, her voice mingling with the other womans.

 

“My god, what did they do to you!” her voice breaking with horror, even as those golden eyes stared at her in shock. 

“How have you not gone insane chérie!” cried the blue tinted woman next to her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, we did it. 1K hits. OMG THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH AGHHHHHHHH HOW! I am just losing my shit here, you are all amazing, I'm glad that you're reading this bullshit, thanks for sticking with me.
> 
> Unfortunately, Catharsis is the second to last chapter, so, like all good things, this story must end. Get ready, the end times approach.
> 
> I'd still love some comments, especially about how terrible this story is, as long as its constructive criticism and not stupid ranting. If you have honest well thought out complaints don't hesitate to share them, I look forward to it.


	10. Explanations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's about damn time that they had this talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the final chapter of Death's Door. It seemed fitting that the last chapter would get posted two weeks after the first one went up.
> 
> I just want to take a minute to thank you guys so much for sticking with me through this unbelievable mess, and for liking it as much as you did. Seriously, thank you all so much for reading, I hope to see you again when I post my next story.

“It’s been weeks, I think it’s about time we had that talk?”

 

Lena crossed her arms defiantly, not to be denied this time. Amélie slowly lowered her cup from its position at her mouth. She knew exactly what talk the other girl meant. She had been dodging it for weeks now, but she knew it had to happen eventually.

 

She sighed quietly, preparing herself mentally. “What do you want to know?”

 

Lena grinned internally, glad to have finally worn the other woman down enough to finally talk this through. “First off I want to know what you saw. What actually happened from your perspective?”

 

Amélie nodded sharply once, and proceeded to tell Lena of waking up in the middle of the night to a phone call, of hearing a strange set of sounds on the other end, and watching as her own hands got her husband’s gun and shot him in their bed while he slept. She talked of tests and experiments, of her body being stolen from her, of her mind being caged away, never again to see the light of day. She stopped in the final days of the testing, when things were at their worst. It was only with some quiet reassurance from Lena that she brought herself to continue.

 

“I was being killed inside my own skin. It was like a… parasite, but of the mind. They had infected me with their insidious thoughts, and it was killing me. I pulled away from the world. I went insane, chérie. A second was an eternity and an hour passed in the blink of an eye. The world around me went dark. I was sure I was dying.”

 

“And then…?”

 

Amélie collected herself once again. 

 

“I looked around and there was someone else there, with me in my madness. I thought she was a figment of my imagination. She talked to me, saw my pain, and I saw hers was just as terrible. We helped each other to escape our own private abysses. Because of her I hid a spark of free will deep inside my mind, which allowed me to be here today. I only broke free of Talon’s control because of her. For the longest time I thought she was a dream produced by a delirious mind.”

 

She reached out and grabbed Lena’s hand.

 

“Then I met her on a rooftop, and I was brought back from the dead. She saved my life.  _ You _ did.”

 

She ran her thumb slowly over Lena’s, cold blue skin overlapping warm pink skin.

 

Lena looked at her, choking up, unable to express the words that she felt needed to be said so desperately.

 

Amélie took a shuddering breath, and brought her eyes up to Lena’s.

 

“Your turn chérie.”

 

So Lena told her of a young pilot going out to test an experimental aircraft, when something went wrong and fire began to blaze, only to be replaced by nothing. She told her of a void where time was uncooperative at best and absent at worst, and of the horrible realization that she would either exist their forever or disappear entirely. As she grew less and less corporeal by the day, she finally gave up, wishing for death.

 

“And then…”

 

Hands met in the middle, support given to when the other needed it without question or judgement.

 

“I saw someone.” Lena stopped, staring at their conjoined hands, thumb slowly moving in small circles. 

 

“I figured I was dying and this was some kind of fever dream, so I went with it. But when I touched you…”

 

“Yes, I felt the same thing.”   
  
“You had it worse than me.”

 

“I beg to differ chérie.”

 

“You’re the only reason I managed to make an appearance in the first place. If you hadn’t been there I…” She trailed off, the alternative too horrifying to contemplate, even after so many months.

 

Amélie lifted a hand to her face and brushed away a tear that was rolling down her cheek. If it had been anyone else Lena would’ve immediately wiped away the tears herself and thrown up the smile she wore like a shield. But Amélie knew, knew of the pain she kept so carefully hidden, and understood her, so she let the tears flow.

 

She began to sob openly, and Amélie immediately folded her into a tight embrace, holding her close until her tears were spent. She sat up, still sniffing, and wiped her eyes with the edge of her ever present jacket. 

 

Amélie smiled sadly at her, tears glistening in her own eyes.

 

“Oh no, you’re not derailing this conversation because I had a bit of a cry.” yelled Lena, and Amélie had to crack a small grin at that.

 

She refocused on the girl across from her, as she settled herself back in her spot across from her on the bed. 

 

“I get what, what I really don’t understand is how? How do two people who have never met see each other across an impossible distance? It should have been impossible?”

 

Amélie sat there quietly for a moment.

 

“I have thought about that a lot myself. I think…” she struggled to find the words. “I think we both had given up on life. We were literally on deaths doorstep. Somehow, we found each other there, someone as in pain and in need as we were, and we found a reason to turn away from death.”

 

Lena smiled. “I know I wouldn’t have gotten through that without you. I’d have walked right through the door.”

 

Amélie smiled back. “As would I chérie, but you gave me a reason to keep living.” She reached out a hand to brush a stray strand of hair behind the other girl’s ear.

 

“In fact…” 

 

Her lips ghosted over Lena’s, freezing cold against burning warmth.

 

“You are still doing it.”

 

Lena sat there, struck dumb for a moment, then she smiled, a real smile for the first time since she had come back from the dead.

 

She leaned over and kissed the woman that had made her life worth living again.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> All comments appreciated, good and bad. Just, thanks for reading! :) This story has officially ended, and I will not be writing more, so I hope you enjoyed the full breadth of this shitty fic.


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